Reebok One GB50 Exercise Bike Review

Reebok Fitness are one of the best-known brands in the home fitness equipment market and have a strong reputation for building machines that offer excellent value for money at the entry and mid-point levels. While they’ve also started to aim at the upper-mid point as well with some of their more recent models, the Reebok One GB50 upright bike is positioned squarely at entry-level where they’ve got the strongest reputation. So what’s it like?

While there have been some complaints out there about the assembly instructions not being clear, we found them to be very much par for the course for an upright bike. The diagrams are simple enough and the whole process is complete in 7 steps. There are a couple of bits we can see could be confusing such as the instruction to screw the left pedal in clockwise where in fact it has to be counter-clockwise but for the most part, it’s straightforward and took us around 40 min to get it ready for use.

Looks-wise it’s a pretty good looking bike. The black finish with red trim works really well and the chunky transport wheels add to the impression that it’s very sturdy. It’s got modern lines and should sit in most rooms without sticking out like a sore thumb.

As has become the norm for upright bikes at this sort of price point, there are a number of adjustments you can make to get the right position on the bike before starting. The seat has adjustments for height from pedals and distance from handlebars. The handlebars also adjust to it’s fairly easy to get a good position so that you maintain the correct posture during a workout. It’s certainly no less comfortable that most of the other bikes we’ve tried, though soft as the saddle is, if you’re not used to exercising it might take a week or so to get over any initial saddle soreness!

The 9kg flywheel delivers a nice smooth and even action all the way through the cycle and gives this bike a very nice, quality feel and the 5″ blue backlit LCD display actually works pretty well, delivering workout information on speed, distance, time, RPM, calories, pulse, and watts. There are 32 levels of resistance and it does a good job of cycling through all the levels smoothly at a good speed and relatively quietly too. The upper end of the resistance is surprisingly stiff should provide enough of a challenge for anyone who wants to use this bike. One obvious and rather disappointing aspect is the lack of user profiles. User profiles really do help to enhance the training data for things like fitness tests and particularly calorie burn counts. While these things are always theoretical on fitness machines, it’s nice to have them as accurate as possible, rather than the one size fits all approach which Reebok have opted for here.

Getting started is really very simple. Press start! That’ll pretty much do it for manual mode, though it’s also possible to quickly set targets for time, distance, calories or pulse so when you start it counts down to zero rather than counting up ad-infinitum. Selecting programmes is a simple process and before you start the workout it’s possible to alter the difficulty level of the programme. Having scalable programmes like this is definitely an advantage as it means you can select your favourite format for a workout and then keep increasing the difficulty level as your fitness levels improve. The more you like a programme, the more likely you are to keep using the bike so this certainly helps in making sure you keep your training sessions regular.

In addition to the manual and preset workouts, there’s a heart rate control programme which is quick and simple. Just enter your age and then select the percentage of maximum heart rate you’d like to work out at. While simple, this method is also a little crude as it doesn’t let you set an actual target heart rate, but rather it calculates your max heart rate based on the age you’ve entered and then lets you choose from 55%, 75%, 90% of that, nor does it actually display the max heart rate that’s been calculated but instead relies on you to work it out using the formula given in the instruction manual. When it comes to heart rate workouts we’d definitely prefer to see something less crude with more control and certainly something that doesn’t rely on the user having to do calculations (however simple) before being able to use it safely, for obvious reasons! This method of heart rate control is something we really don’t like very much at all and definitely falls into the ‘better luck next time’ category.

On a more positive note, it’s nice to see the addition of a user defined programme which is simple enough to set up and a recovery test that will rate your fitness on 6 levels ranging from excellent to poor.

The console itself is well organised and logical without too many buttons (too many buttons is a pet hate of ours!) making controlling the bike quick and simple. The addition of a tablet holder and a USB charging port is a really nice touch, though don’t fall into the same trap we initially did and think you can connect your device to the bike – you can’t. The USB is purely for charging purposes but this does mean that you can take nice long workouts while watching your favourite shows or reading a book without worrying if you’re going to run out of power. Oh and water bottle holder – there is one – and while that may be a small thing, it’s always, always a good thing!

The warranty on the Reebok One GB50bike is the standard 2 years parts and labour warranty offered across all the products in their ranges and with Reeboks reliable service should anything go wrong you can rest easy that it’ll get sorted out.

The Reebok One GB50 is a nice exercise bike, built well, with a good spec and some extras. It's not a bad choice and comes from a trusted brand. However, a quick look at what else is available quickly throws up some better options. Take for example, the DKN AM-3i which has user profiles, interactive training options, wireless heart rate receiver and is available for a good deal less than the GB50!

Whilst every effort is made to give you accurate information we cannot guarantee the technical specification. Models change on a regular basis and may differ slightly from the above review. We recommend you contact the retailer if you have a question regarding technical data. Please read our Legal Disclaimer